Archive: Jan 2010

Keely W., Sophie J., and Austin C. sent in this 20-second commercial for KFC in which a white guy surrounded by black people makes the “awkward” situation all better by giving them fried chicken:

So, first of all, feeling awkward because you’re the only person with your particular racial make up in a group is called white privilege.  Most racial minorities find themselves the only or one of the only members of their group all of the time.  Calling the situation “awkward” just suggests that white people are, or should be, uncomfortable around black people.

But, second, is it racist that the guy soothes the situation by sharing fried chicken?  In the U.S., the idea that black people eat a lot of fried chicken is a stereotype (applied recently to Obama).  But this is an Australian commercial and KFC is saying that there is no such association in Australia.

I don’t know if that’s true.  But if it is, it raises interesting questions as to (1)  just how cognizant companies should have to be about various stereotypes around the world and (2) whether the biased histories of some countries must be more attended to than others.

A Guardian article quotes a professor arguing that the U.S. has “…a tendency to think that their history is more important than that of other countries.”

Ouch.  Does it hurt because it’s true?

I think these are tough questions.  What do you think?

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Chrissy B., Dmitriy T.M., and Lindsay sent in videos regarding Brit Hume speaking on Fox News about the Tiger Woods scandal, arguing that he needs to convert to Christianity, rather than his current Buddhist beliefs, if he’s going to get back on the right moral track:

Transcript of the main point:

The extent to which he can recover seems to me depends on his faith, he’s said to be a Buddhist, I don’t think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith, so.. my message to Tiger would be, “Tiger, turn your faith–turn to the Christian faith, and you can make a total recovery and be a GREAT example to the world.”

It’s an interesting example of how many Americans treat Christianity as the default, “normal,” and the best religion for everyone. Can you imagine Fox News, or any other news outlet, intentionally giving air time to a person saying that Tiger Woods needs to convert from Christianity to Buddhism (or any other religion) if he’s going to change his behavior? Can you imagine the outcry if the suggested religion was Islam?

The Daily Show aired a segment that addressed this issue, and then a day later had another segment about Brit Hume’s claims that Christianity is under attack in the U.S.:

None of this, of course, even addresses the irony of suggesting that Christianity is the only religion that can help save you from infidelity, given the number of conservative Christian politicians who have been caught cheating on their wives in the past couple of years. But I don’t think irony is Hume’s strong suit.

UPDATE: Rosa S. of Newsy sent in this segment about the issue:

Binyavanga Wainaina does an excellent job, in this 3-minute video, describing ways that “Africa” tends to be written about in the West. See how many of the tropes you recognize:

To paraphrase Jose, at Thick Culture, it’s important to be engaged with the world, but our engagement shouldn’t be entirely on our terms. And, especially, not terms in which the Western world gets to construct itself as the savior of the less fortunate (e.g., Avatar).

Such ideas make it seem as if underdeveloped parts of the world are somehow inherently deficient (culturally or otherwise). When, in fact, insofar as underdeveloped parts of Africa or other continents need saving, it is partly (largely?) because of (1) a history of colonialism that stole their resources and disrupted their societies and (2) the current global economic system that continues to put them at a devastating disadvantage.

See also: The Single Story of “Africa”

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Marie D. E. sent in this video, titled “Karen 26,” in which a woman claims to be looking for the father of the child she conceived after a one-night stand with a tourist (found at Adland):

The video, it turns out, was actually produced as part of a campaign by Visit Denmark, a Danish tourism agency. The idea is, apparently, to market Denmark to male tourists with the implication that it’s easy to have anonymous, unprotected sex with attractive local women who just want to introduce you to Danish customs. I don’t know that the possibility of unplanned pregnancy would be the best tourism draw, but she does assure us that she’s not a slut and she’s not wanting anything from the father, so perhaps that will reassure potential tourists that not only can they have unprotected sex with local women, there are no real consequences to doing so.

So the perception in many parts of the world of Scandinavian women as sexually liberated and promiscuous is used by a state-funded agency to promote tourism by turning female sexuality into another local attraction…with the added benefit of being free, unlike in nations known for sex tourism.

Also see our posts on promoting European tourism with infidelity, sex tourism in Thailand, and female sex tourists in the Caribbean.

Larry Harnisch of The Daily Mirror sent in this 1910 ad that suggests electric cars are appropriate for women because they’re clean, quiet, and easy to drive:

Also: Sarah Haskins on marketing cars to women, women choose Chryslers over men, Ford says cars liberate women, it’s ok if your wife wrecks your VW, break the glass ceiling with a Jeep, get revved up with a Cadillac, and the Dodge La Femme.

Hewlett Packard (HP) recently released face tracking software that allows a webcamera to chase you around as you talk to it. The face recognition software appears to recognize lighter-skinned faces with no problem, but has trouble with darker-skinned faces.  This probably doesn’t mean that HP is anti-black people, but it does suggest that HP didn’t sufficiently test its product on all kinds of faces, which means that it didn’t value black customers very much while doing research and development.

Both Kate W. and Lucy P. sent in this video in which Wanda and Desi, humorously, demonstrate the problem in this youtube clip:

We’ve seen this kind of thing before with a Nikon camera that seemed to think that Asian people were always blinking (though there was some confusion as to whether it did that to everyone) and another version of face recognition software.

Nikon responded to complaints about the program by saying:

We are working with our partners to learn more. The technology we use is built on standard algorithms that measure the difference in intensity of contrast between the eyes and the upper cheek and nose. We believe that the camera might have difficulty “seeing” contrast in conditions where there is insufficient foreground lighting.

Which Kate said is a nice way of saying: it’s not HPs fault that “your face doesn’t have enough contrast and why don’t you turn on a light while you’re at it.”

(By the way, the fact that this video has, as of right now, almost 2 million views is a beautiful example of the democratizing power of the youtubes!!!)

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Meg R. was signing up for the University of North Carolina, Wilmington health plan and noticed something interesting about the men’s and women’s health section of the benefits plan.  I’ll let you peruse and put my snarky comments afterwards:

Um, so apparently women do not have hearts or kidneys.  They only have targets for sexually transmitted infections and fetuses.  While men apparently need care for cancer and diabetes, women get only pap smears and urinary tract infections.  Oh, and FYI, if you’re a lady, “There are additional charges over and above the health fee.”  It’s amazing that we can even call the same number, given that our bodies are so fundamentally different from one another.

Wow, just wow.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight posted some graphs that show a clear decrease in passenger deaths as a result of Violent Passenger Incidents (hijackings, sabotage/bombings, pilot shootings) since the 1980s:

Of course, the vast majority of people killed on 9/11 weren’t in the planes, but on the ground; if you include those, then 2001 has a much higher fatality level than any other year:

Silver’s point is that because of 9/11 and attempted bombings since then, many people are under the impression that the danger of violent incidents on planes is increasing. But it clearly isn’t–the number of passengers killed per decade as a result of such incidents has gone down even as plane travel has become more widespread and the number of people in the air each year has increased.

He also suggests,

…the loss of life that occurred on the ground on 9/11 would be very hard for Al Qaeda or any other terrorist group to replicate. The reason is that the last line of defense against the terrorists has also proven to be the best, and that is the passengers. Brave passengers thwarted the hijacking attempts aboard United 93 and Qantas 173, and sabotage attempts aboard NWA 253 and AA 63 (the Shoe Bomber incident).

This isn’t, obviously, meant to say that we shouldn’t worry about airline security or that the loss of life on 9/11 is unimportant. It’s just a good example of how it can be difficult to judge whether the risk of things is increasing or decreasing, particularly when they’re scary, and incidents that are actually quite rare can seem to be happening “all the time” once we’re thinking about, and noticing reports of, them.